Authoring a PhD

Argumentative explanations
Organizing your account argumentatively is again easy to do.
First you gather together all the points which might be made
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in one interpretation or intellectual position and express them
coherently. Next you assemble an alternative or opposed inter-
pretation, originating from a different intellectual position and
seek to better explain the phenomena being focused on. The
sequence of materials becomes one of ‘pro’ arguments then
‘anti’ arguments, of thesis and antithesis (and perhaps synthe-
sis). Figure 3.5c shows how I might do this when giving an
account of my home study. Here I could set out all the points
that I like about my study, perhaps sequencing them in terms
of their importance to me in evaluating the room. I like my
study because it is spacious, conveniently shaped, equipped
with lots of walls suitable for storage, newly set up, restfully
decorated, well lit, quiet, set a bit apart from the rest of the
house, and so on. Then I might consider all the problems I still
have with the study, such as the amount of clutter I’ve man-
aged to jam into it already, my inability to keep it neatly
organized, or its patchwork feel. (The study was not equipped
in one go, as ‘real’ offices are. Instead its current state repre-
sents a layered accumulation of different bits of kit that I’ve
been able to afford at different stages of my career and never
had the heart, or the finances, to scrap and start again from
scratch.)
An argumentative approach will usually look well organized
for readers, so long as you distinguish clear intellectual posi-
tions or sides in a controversy, using labels and schools of
thought already recognized. By definition an argumentative
approach focuses on a debate or disagreement and tends to
project into sharp focus your value-added. It will also usually
look personalized, especially where you have taken care to
frame or configure your central thesis question in a way or from
an angle which is particular to your work. This approach will
also handle multiple theoretical positions or relational argu-
ments explicitly, normally an important feature of humanities
or social sciences research.
There are also some disadvantages of an argumentative
approach at doctoral level. Pro- and anti- arguments, thesis and
antithesis oppositions are usually pairs, and only rarely triples.
So argumentative categories may not be enough to organize
eight chapters. People sometimes react to this difficulty by trying
to handle many more interpretations at once. Some students,
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especially those who have carried out overextended literature
searches, somehow lapse into thinking that at doctoral level
they must cover 
all
possible interpretative positions, even if
they are very numerous. In fact this option is neither feasible
nor desirable in an argumentative approach. A doctorate is basi-
cally a monograph, treating a single subject intensively. It is not
a textbook, still less a work of reference. Trying to show how
four or five perspectives would handle a particular problem or
interpret the same set of phenomena will quickly become very
repetitive. Carried through at any decent level, such an enter-
prise can also consume a large amount of your wordage limit.
You need to configure your thesis question, and set up any ini-
tial literature review which you do, so that you can legitimately
restrict your work to considering only two, or at most three,
main lines of argument.
Another problem with an argumentative approach is that it
may not sit very comfortably in disciplines which adopt a ‘nor-
mal science’ approach, those with a hegemonic ‘mainstream’
view built up by the careful cumulation of work within a single,
accepted paradigm. Argumentatively structured theses can be
unattractive for students from more consensual societies (such
as Japan), where overt disagreements can seem somewhat 
vulgar or wrong-headed. And since scholars often tend to self-
select themselves into groupings of like-minded people, it will
sometimes be hard to stand up and treat as credible a view con-
sidered ‘deviant’ by your local department’s orthodoxy, perhaps
even anathema to it. Finally it can be difficult to identify and
develop an effective argumentative approach which is close-
fitting around your thesis question at an early stage of your
research. At the start of your effort you may tend to focus on
disputes that are too broadly drawn or too conventionally spec-
ified, again a tendency that is exaggerated where people author
long introductory literature reviews, rather than snappy
focused ones.
Matrix patterns
To get more articulated organizational structures for neatly
organizing eight or so chapters, you can combine any of the
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three approaches above. There are four pairs of possible 
combinations:
◆
analytic plus argumentative
◆
argumentative plus analytic
◆
analytic plus descriptive
◆
argumentative plus
descriptive
In each pair, the first approach listed is the primary or top-level
organizing principle, grouping together sets of chapters. The
other part of the pair is the subsidiary or second-tier organizing
principle, explaining the sequence of chapters within each of
the top-tier groupings. Figure 3.6 shows this distinction in a
diagrammatic way for the two matrix patterns combining
analytic and argumentative approaches. If the analytic dimen-
sion is primary then arguments and interpretations are used in
pairs of chapters pulled together by systematic or causal or
functional criteria. If the argumentative dimension is primary,
then each contrasting broad view is considered in turn, broken
down into its component aspects.
Matrix patterns involving a second-tier descriptive organiza-
tion of chapters are very common in doctoral theses. Here
authors recognize that they cannot just pick up an external or
‘real world’ pattern of phenomena and use it to structure their
thesis without risking a ‘random shopping list’ appearance. So
analytic categories or a consideration of different argumentative
positions are used to provide the primary structure of the thesis.
But within groups of chapters a narrative, or historical, or guide-
book pattern is then followed. (In my experience a descriptive
approach is rarely or never used in a matrix approach as the pri-
mary organizing dimension. People who like using externally
given structures tend just to do a wholly descriptive thesis.)
A matrix approach offers many advantages for doctoral stu-
dents. It almost always generates enough categories to slot your
chapters into. Figure 3.6a shows a six-box pattern combining 
a primary argumentative dimension (a liberal view versus a
Marxist interpretation in this case) and a secondary analytic
dimension (compartmentalizing each approach into economic,
political and cultural boxes in this case). Using this kind of
graphical planning device is helpful because it will alert you to
an alternative sequence shown in Figure 3.6b, where you go
across rows first and move down the columns second. Here the
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primary dimension is the analytic one, and the argumenta-
tive dimension is secondary. Exploiting the two-dimensional
space of a blank matrix like this means that you will often be
able to pull together more strands of your thinking than can be
accommodated in the more usual simple, linear approach.
Either way Figure 3.6 would generate enough boxes to arrange
the core chapters of a thesis in a strong and robust pattern. 
Add a lead-in chapter at the beginning and a lead-out chapter
at the end to this core and you would have an effective eight-
chapter PhD.
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Liberal
view
Marxist
view
economic aspects
political aspects
cultural aspects